DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: As a dominantly American Sign Language (ASL) Deaf sapio-demi-bi-kink-asexual – 16 years has passed, by where most of the appealing deaf men fluent in ASL are already taken, gay or incompatible or Elite snobs.
Tried to meet hearing men, but 99.9999999% refuses to become fluent in ASL. Why is it hearing women will bend over backwards to learn ASL fluently for their deaf boyfriends/husbands, but hearing men won’t become fluent for their Deaf girlfriends/wife? Without clear visual-gestural language that I can understand 100%, I refuse to date non-signers and they need to be sensitive & aware of Deaf/ASL Culture norms.
On top of that, most guys are surprisingly vanilla in bed. I’ve tried numerous of dating site and got scammed. Moved to 7 different states thinking I’d meet up nice new fellas at a lot of Deaf events, nothing. Even attended workshops hoping to meet like minded guys, nothing. I’m now 52 years old and suddenly a bunch of non-signing nice 30 years old hearing men are hitting on me!? My limit is 45 years old & up… I’m running out of ideas. Help?
Hard Outta Luck
DEAR HARD OUTTA LUCK: Alright HOL, I want to preface this with the acknowledgement that I’m a hearing man and only have a limited knowledge of Deaf culture. While I’m aware of some norms, issues and controversies within the Deaf community, there’s likely going to be things that I miss or am ignorant of, so take my thoughts with suitable grains of salt. I also invite my deaf and heard of hearing readers to share their thoughts and experiences in the comments.
So with that in mind, let’s take these in order of “least complicated to most complicated answers.”
First: Hearing men who don’t or won’t learn ASL for their partners tend to be… well, self-centered. It’s not that dissimilar from folks who won’t put in the effort to be able to understand their partners for whom English (or what-have-you) is a second language; yes, the fact that they may be fluent is handy, but learning it yourself so you can communicate with them (and their family, friends, peers, coworkers, etc) is, at the very least, considerate and shows that you’re willing to meet them where they are.
Second: Despite what the culture tells us, there’re plenty of younger men who like older, more mature women. There’s still bulls--t social stigma surrounding older women with younger men, so many men are less open about it (even with the prevalence of terms like “MILF” and “cougar”), but they exist in greater numbers than many people realize. The fact that you’re encountering young dudes who dig your vibe likely says more about your personal journey than anything else. And while they may not be your particular preferred flavor… hey, just because you’re not going to the party doesn’t mean it isn’t nice to be invited.
Third: there tends to be two types of people in the kink community – people who were basically born kinky, and people who became kinky… usually because they were dating a kinky partner. This is going to be important for you because you have a fairly stringent set of must-haves and dealbreakers that’re going to sharply limit your available pool of potential partners. The number of Deaf men who are kinky and or hearing kinky men who are fluent in ASL are going to be thin on the ground and of those, the number of single (or ethically non-monogamous) ones will be smaller still.
This means that you have to make some choices.
The first is that you accept that your dating pool is going to be very small and accept that you’re going to be single longer than you’d prefer. Obviously this is not something you’d want, otherwise you wouldn’t be writing to me.
The second is that you relax your guidelines about what you will or won’t accept in a partner as the price of entry to having a partner in the first place. Now, considering that this would entail, for example, a pretty serious language and communication barrier if you were dating a hearing man, I can understand why this would be a no-go for you.
The third – and more viable option – is that you look for potential partners (both Deaf and hearing) who are willing to become what you need. Remember what I said about how there’re two types of kinky people? Well, you may need to focus on the second kind of kinky person – the kind who learned to love kink because their partner lead them to it. This means that, if you’re going to date exclusively within the Deaf community, you’d likely be starting off with folks who are more into standard-issue sex, but who are open to kink or willing to be introduced to it. This is likely going to be a much easier lift to accomplish, and would help expand your pool of potential dates. Yes, it means that there may be more vanilla sex than you might prefer at the start, but it would still ultimately lead to your having the kind of relationship you want.
To be sure: you could date a hearing man who’s already kinky and is willing to learn ASL for you; I promise, despite the preponderance of straight dudes who make dating a headache for women, there’re kinksters out there who’d be willing to make the effort. However, they can be harder to find, and there’s going to be a greater delay for them to develop fluency than there would likely be for a standard-issue Deaf man to learn the ins and outs of BDSM or shibari or other forms of kink you might be into.
I wish I had an easier or more satisfying answer for you. In an ideal world, it’d be easier. If there were a genie who could grant you the perfect man, that’d be even better. But unfortunately, there’s no real settling down without settling for and every relationship comes with a price of entry. In this case, that may mean having to find a hot, loving, vanilla Deaf man to be the Eliza Doolittle to your kinky Henry Higgins.
Good luck.
Please send your questions to Dr. NerdLove at his website (www.doctornerdlove.com/contact); or to his email, doc@doctornerdlove.com